Have old athletic shoes? Send them to Nike
Just about everyone has some form of athletic shoe, whether it is for walking, running, or playing a specific sport. And of course, those shoes finally wear out or are simply no longer used in favor of a newer pair. When you get to the toss them out stage, you need to find a drop off center for Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program.
The Reuse-A-Shoe program was begun in 1990 as the brain child of Nike employee Steve Potter. He envisioned shredding old Nikes into reusable materials. Since that time 24,546,914 pairs of old tennis shoes have been collected.
Just about every state in the US has drop-off locations where you can take up to 10 pairs of shoes. In Europe, the UK and Germany have drop-off locations as do Australia and New Zealand down under. There are two facilities that actually recycle the shoes and those are located in the state of Oregon and in the country of Belgium.
Once collected, shoes sent to the Oregon facility are split into three main parts:” the rubber outsole, foam midsole, and fabric upper”. The three separate parts are “fed through grinders and purified”. The resulting material is called Nike Grind – Nike Grind Rubber, Nike Grind Foam, and Nike Grind Fiber.
At the Belgium facility the shoes are ground up as a whole. Once ground, the resulting mix is sent through a number of separators. Regardless of which method is used, the final grinds are then used in a variety of ways to create or refurbish athletic facilities.
Each type of Nike Grind can be used to create athletic surfaces. Nike Grind Rubber is perfect for “use in track surfaces, interlocking gym flooring tiles, and playground surfaces.” The rubber grind can also be used for the soles of other Nike shoes.
Nike Grind Foam is used for cushioning outdoor basketball and tennis courts. This grind is also used for futsal (five a side soccer) indoor fields. The final substance Nike Grind Fiber is used for making pads for cushioning “indoor synthetic courts and wood courts.”
Finding a drop-off center is fairly easy. Just go here, choose your country and state and then locate the closest drop-off point. Recycling those old athletic shoes will finally get them out of the house while making you feel good about getting rid of them.
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